Along with Sophocles and Euripides, Aristophanes is considered one of the three great Greek playwrights. Only eleven of his nearly forty plays survive in their entirety to this day. «The Frogs and Other Plays» includes the titular play along «The Wasps» and «The Thesmophoriazusae.» Produced the year after the death of Euripides, «The Frogs» laments the decay of Greek tragedy which Aristophanes attributed to that writer. It is an admirable exampl ...
The second story in the Oedipus Trilogy, «Antigone», examines the conflict between public duty and personal loyalty. Following the banishment of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices kill each other over a dispute of succession to the thrown of Thebes. Creon, Antigone's uncle, succeeds to the thrown and declares that no one may bury Polyneices under penalty of death. Antigone, disregards this order and buries Polyneices and is willing to face th ...
William Shakespeare's «King Henry IV, Part I» is one the playwright's classic historical English dramas. The narrative revolves around the rebellion against King Henry IV led by the Welshman Glendower and the Percies. «King Henry IV, Part I» is a play with excellent courtly drama and battlefield action, with a riotous comedic subplot. ...
"A Midsummer Night's Dream", one of Shakespeare's earliest comedies is a spectacular tale of fantasy. The story revolves around two couples (Hermia and Lysander and Helena and Demetrius) who escape to a fairyland forest ruled by Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of the Fairies. «A Midsummer Night's Dream», is light-hearted fare that exhibits some of Shakespeare's greatest comedic and lyrical work. ...
Based largely on the accounts of Plutarch and Livy, «Coriolanus» is a tragedy concerning the legendary Roman leader Caius Martius, later given the honorary name Coriolanus. From the first act with riots over grain to later pitched battles with the Volscian army, Coriolanus proves himself to be a brilliant general with remarkable bravery. In his bid for a position in the Roman Senate, he discovers the power of both his allies and his enemies, rev ...
William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale was one of the last plays that the playwright would write. A classic romance with elements of tragedy, The Winter's Tale is an audience favorite and is often performed. The story revolves around Leontes, the King of Sicilia, who mistakenly comes to believe that his wife has committed adultery. In the end the truth is discovered and the two reconcile against the backdrop of a happy wedding ce ...
"King Lear" is, in its picture of the tragic effect of human weakness and human cruelty, the most overpowering of the works of Shakespeare. It was written about 1605, in the middle of that period of his activity when he was interested, for whatever reason, in portraying the suffering and disaster that are entailed by defects of character, and the terrible cost at which such defects are purged away; and not even «Hamlet» displays these thing ...
Along with Sophocles and Euripides, Aristophanes is considered one of the three great Greek playwrights. Only eleven of his nearly forty plays survive in their entirety to this day. Of his extant works Aristophanes's «Lysistrata» is considered one of his finest and one of the truly great comedies from classical antiquity. Central to the work is the vow by the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands until they end the brutal war ...
Euripides (480 BC-406 BC) is revered as one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, and produced the largest body of extant work by any ancient playwright. He is considered to be the most modern of the three, and his works laid the foundation for Western theatre. Euripides turned to playwriting at a young age, achieving his first victory in the dramatic competitions of the Athenian City Dionysia in ...